The Prank Chronicles
by BananaBirdNova
Summary: By BananaBird. A series of one-shots; suddenly Sideswipe has decided to plague Prowl with a multitude of pranks. Will the tactician ever bring justice to the twins?
1. The Best Part of Waking Up

Prowl walked into the rec room, data pad tucked under one arm. He rarely showed just how tired he could be sometimes, but in his processor he was still rolling out of his berth a few clicks ago. He headed straight for the energon dispensers for his morning's hot energon, spotting his 'World's Best Tactician' mug, given to him by Bluestreak. Prowl remembered, fondly but with exasperation, the day the younger Datsun had given it to him:

"_Hey Prowl Bumblebee was telling me about a mug Spike was giving Sparkplug with the phrase 'World's Best Dad' on it and it reminded me of you not that I'm saying you're my dad that would be weird, even though we're both from Praxia, plus Cybertronians don't have family systems like the humans, which is weird when you think about it, because we have brothers like the twins and Sparkmates, but we don't have mothers or fathers, just creators. Anyway I wanted to make a mug for you that said 'World's Best Tactician' because you _are_ the best tactician, because I mean only Shockwave can face against you, and that's pretty good, only I wanted it to say 'Universe's Best Tactician' because we don't live solely on this planet . . ."_

"_Blue."_

"_. . .but that phrase was too long and syllablely; is that a word syllablely? It's like wordy but with syllables; and nobody wants to read a phrase on a mug that's too syllablely, so I put 'World's Best Tactician' . . ._

"_Bluestreak!"_

_Bluestreak halted his long winded speech and looked up at Prowl with an apprehensive, puppy-eyed face._

"_Thank You," Prowl said, accepting the gift graciously. The smile that lit up the young gunner's face had been more than enough to make up for the time Prowl had had to spend listening to his rambling._

Prowl grabbed his mug and began to take the final steps to the energon dispenser when a pair of yellow hands grabbed the mug out of his own.

"Don't worry, Prowler, you were up late last night with your work. We got this," Sideswipe chimed at him cheerfully as he followed his golden brother to the energon dispenser. Prowl stood his ground for a click while his battle computer processed the twins' unusually helpful and cheery morning behavior. Eventually he decided it was to his advantage to figure out later what the twins were up to, so he moved over to the table where Jazz sat.

The only reason why Jazz was up before Prowl was because he had never gone into recharge the night before due to an unusually heavy, yet not unheard of, work schedule that had been assigned to him for the week. He sipped from his very own Bluestreak made 'Worlds #1 Head of Special Ops,' which Blue had made for him because:

_"You and Prowl are always meeting in the morning because you're best friends, which is cool because you're Second and Third in command and if you weren't friends then you wouldn't get along and that would be bad for all of us and I thought it looked weird that only Prowl had a mug, so I made you one, but I didn't want them to be exactly the same so I put '#1' on it instead of 'best' but they're really the same thing . . ."_

Prowl sat down at the table and promptly took out his data pad to review the new day's schedule, upcoming meetings, Ark statistics, and so on.

"How's it going, Prowler man," Jazz asked cheerily.

Prowl finished reviewing the page he was on before setting down his data pad. "Well, enough, Jazz," he responded.

Sunstreaker chose that moment to deliver Prowls mug of energon with a "Here you go, Prowl. Breakfast of champions!" before zipping off to join his brother at a nearby table.

"Odd behavior," Jazz commented.

Prowl decided he was too tired to care and concluded that maybe the twins were doing something nice just-because for a change. He later concluded that he must have been suffering from lack of recharge and an under-functioning processor. He spat out what had entered his mouth as he sipped from the mug.

"What on Cybertron?" he muttered as he poured the contents of the mug onto the table. The substance turned out to be hundreds of human sized red canisters with black plastic lids. Jazz leaned in to inspect.

"Why is my mug filled with human containers . . ." Prowl said, poking one of the cans and accidentally causing it to burst open to reveal its contents of a brown powdery substance. Prowl scanned and categorized the stuff, ". . . which are filled with finely ground coffea arabica beans?"

"Well, y'know Prowl, the best part of wakin' up, is Folgers in your cup!" Jazz responded wittily.

"Hey!" Sunstreaker proclaimed from across the room, "You stole our line!"

"Sorry man, but you're gonna have to get up pretty early to best the 'World's #1 Head of Special Ops!'" Jazz said, lifting his mug in a mocking salute and taking a sip.

"It's okay Sunny, we'll get him tomorrow," Sideswipe implored and the two raced out of the rec room fiendishly.

"I don't understand Jazz, 'the best part of waking up is Folgers in my cup?'"

"Prowl, go watch some TV," Jazz responded. "And most humans just call it ground coffee, man"

"Hmm," was all Prowl intoned as he stared calculatingly at the pile of coffee canisters in front of him.

"What the _slag_ is this!" came a voice from behind them. The two looked to see Brawn dumping out an energon cube full of human coffee canisters, each tin canister exploding on the floor like mini bullets of coffee. "What happened to our energon?"

Prowl sighed and stood up, "I'll go get Wheeljack."

Later that morning found Prowl sweeping up the byproduct of the earlier prank. Prowl was going to make the twins clean up the mess as punishment, but they were nowhere to be found and mechs were beginning to complain about the loose human canisters exploding underfoot.

So that mid morning found Prowl sweeping up coffee canisters by the hundreds. He thought it would have been easy to do and he would have been done in a few minutes, but the canisters were impossible to clean without them bursting open and spewing ground coffee all over the place. How the twins had gotten ahold of so many cans of coffee in the first place, short of hijacking a Folgers delivery truck, Prowl could only guess. So Prowl was forced to sweep and mop and scrub to get the table and floor satisfactorily clean.

Nobody was in the rec room by now; not even Jazz who had to return to his work. Not that this bothered the doorwinger, who often thought of himself as a soloist. Hound, however, soon strolled in after a morning scout to catch a rerun of his favorite nature show. He saw the tactician at his work and noted the substance the black-and-white was striving to clean up.

"Don't you have any doughnuts to go with that coffee, sarge'?" he perked as he walked by. Prowl sighed, letting his doorwings droop in resignation. Too many others had made that joke earlier to the point where Prowl had given up responding.

Hound plunked himself onto the couch, chuckling as he turned on the television. The TV flashed onto a commercial of happy people drinking out of mugs. A jingle followed, chiming into the silent room: _The best part of wakin' up is Folgers in your cup!_

"Ohhhh," Prowl intoned from his part of the room. Hound turned and saw the tactician staring at the TV and fading commercial with a look of revelation in his optics.

"You need to get our more, Prowl," Hound said, flipping channels until he reached the documentary he wanted.

Prowl didn't respond, but got back to his work with a new bit of information to mull over in his processor.


	2. Poke

The recreation room was quiet and peaceful. It was during that sweet spot time Prowl loved where evening shift had just ended and those who had gotten off were too tired to interact with others, and those on the night shift were trying to squeeze out every last bit of alone time before it was their turn to begin their duties. Prowl sat at a table in the corner, sipping from his mug, reading reports, and overall enjoying the only time of day it seemed where the Ark was in tranquility. Among others in the room, Jazz had one audio tuned into his music, Cliffjumper was polishing a component from one of his weapons, Smokescreen, Tracks, and Mirage were playing a game of cards, and Sideswipe and Sunstreaker were having a whispered conversation from the opposite side of the room.

The familiar _–ping-_ of a hailing tone came over Prowl's comm-link. He answered to Optimus Prime, who was checking in on the daily reports. After a brief conversation, Prowl was back to his data pad, getting ready to wrap things up for the evening. Another minute passed before something else disturbed his peace:

_-poke-_

Prowl twitched at the sudden sound that had come over his comm-link. Confused, he glanced around, thinking he had simply heard somebody in the room and mistaken it for his comm. But he could find no logical reason why anyone nearby would have uttered the word: 'poke.' But nothing came through the comm-link before a hailing tone. Maybe it was later than he thought and his processor was playing tricks on him. He had one more page he had to get through before he could call it quits; then it would be time for recharge.

_-poke-_

There it was again, in an obnoxious voice that made Prowl cringe. He whipped his head around, but the room was only full of quiet mechs minding their own business. He turned back, now thoroughly convinced his mind was deceiving him. With no way to identify the source of the strange sound, he could only hope it would just stop.

_-poke- -poke poke-_

Prowl slammed his data pad down in frustration, which caught the attention of several bots nearby.

"You okay there Prowler?" Jazz asked.

Prowl glanced over at the saboteur. "I'm fine," was all he said. But before the tactician could do anything else it came again.

_-poke poke poke poke poke-_

"QUIT POKING ME!" Prowl suddenly burst into the quiet room.

Now everybody was staring at Prowl. Jazz looked at him oddly, and despite the visor it was easy to tell he had a quirked optic ridge. Stifled laughter came from Sideswipe and Sunstreaker's corner.

Prowl glanced around the room in a paranoid fashion. "Excuse me," he said as he hurriedly gathered his things and left. Sideswipe leapt from his chair and rushed after the black and white with a wicked grin on his face.

Jazz snerked, not quite sure what had just happened but pretty sure it was hilarious; if it had anything to do with the twins. Suddenly he caught sight of Sunstreaker looking at him in a predatory manner.

_-poke-_


	3. The Voice of Reason

Prowl sat in his office, going through the rounds of daily reports. His office was peacefully quiet, so quiet he could hear the patter of rain on the outside hull of the Ark. The occasional rowdy group of mechs walking by his office was the only thing that disturbed the quiet, the drum of rain, and the sound of him shuffling his data pads. Jazz often nagged him for shutting himself up in his office all day long (which didn't make any sense, how could he shut himself up _all day long_ with shifts to complete, rations to get and rounds to do, honestly he could be so irrational), but Prowl enjoyed the peace. This was his time to think. He would sometimes go to the rec room between shifts to do his work, mainly for the change in scenery, but even when it was quiet in the rec room it wasn't nearly as quiet as his office. So during these times he preferred to, as Jazz would put it, shut himself up from the rest of the world.

The tactician was leaning back in his chair, taking a moment to appreciate the peace of his office, when suddenly:

"_Prowl_," a mysterious voice floated to him. "_This is your conscience, we haven't spoken in a while, how are you?_"

Prowl jumped and glanced around, looking for the mech hiding in his office. When he realized the voice had come from inside his head, his optics narrowed in suspicion. "Sideswipe I know it's you, I can recognize your voice," he said into his comm-link.

"_Nooo_," the voice said again, sounding mystical. "_I am not Sideswipe, I am your conscience, I just happen to have Sideswipe's gorgeous voice_."

"Sideswipe," Prowl began in a warning voice, but was cut off by the not-Sideswipe Sideswipe voice in his head again

"_But speaking of which, I have a message for you: forgive Sideswipe and Sunstreaker for their previous prank, for they cannot help but be themselves. Punishment will only encourage them. Listen to the voice of logic and reason!_"

"Sideswipe you are not getting let off that easy. And how did you manage to bypass the comm-link hailing tone?"

"_I don't know what you're talking about, I am not Sideswipe I am your conscience._"

"You are not my conscience," Prowl said flatly.

"_Yes I am._"

"No, you're not."

"_Are to._"

"Are not… argh!" Prowl growled, frustrated for letting himself get caught in that childish argument loop. "This conversation is over, Sideswipe," he said before deactivating his comm.

Prowl sighed and leaned back in his chair, relieved to be alone in his quiet office again.

"_YOU CAN'T GET RID OF ME I AM YOUR CONSCIENCE!"_

Prowl slammed his palms against his desk and stood up. He left his office, Sideswipe's irritating voice still chattering in his head. He needed to talk to Red Alert about some comm-link security codes.


	4. Splash

Sideswipe held his hand up, a round, jiggling object in his palm. "Just look at it Sunny, it's perfection, a marvel of engineering. I've gotta admit, the humans have us beat here. Seriously, it's genius."

"Yeah whatever, just get over and help me with this" Sunstreaker grouched, his head fins getting tangled in a net he was trying to hold up.

Sideswipe pranced over to his brother and pulled the net off. "You know that was nice of Wheeljack to help us out here, too bad he thought these were for an easier way to wash the Ark."

"Throw him under the bus when Prowl catches us?"

"Exactly," Sideswipe snickered.

After a few minutes of silent work their contraption was properly set up. "Great! Now all Prowler's gotta do is walk up to his door and…" he pantomimed something crashing down from the ceiling and onto the floor, accompanied by sound effects.

"And now we wait," Sunstreaker said deviously and the two rounded the nearest corner to watch.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the door that Sideswipe and Sunstreaker had been working by, Prowl leaned back in his chair and smirked. He'd heard every single word that had been spoken out in the hallway. The two clearly thought he was out on a scouting mission tonight, but what they don't know is that Trailbreaker took his shift so that Prowl could get some last minute work done.

Now, how to turn the tables on the pranksters? He could call the twins to his office and force the trap on them? Effective, but not very subtle. After a moment of consideration a smile crept onto his face and he activated his comm. "Ironhide, could you come to my office please?"

"What do ya need?" Ironhide growled on the other end of the link.

"I just need to discuss some scheduling issues with you."

"Can't ya jus' tell me what the problem is?"

"No I need to show you the charts in person. Please come down to my office immediately."

Ironhide sighed. "Fahn," he said before cutting the link.

Prowl relaxed, feeling pleased with himself. And just like the twins outside his door, he sat back and waited for the show to begin.

Several minutes passed. Prowl was casually glancing through the nearest data pad when he finally heard the sound of footsteps approaching his door. He put the pad down, anticipating the fireworks to come. But the next serious of voices and sounds was not what he had been expecting at all.

From a distance, but rapidly approaching, a voice came to Prowl's audios. "Hey Prowl there's been something I've been meaning to ask you but I keep forgetting and forgetting and I thought I wouldn't be able to ask you tonight because you had a scouting shift but then I remembered you stayed in your office to work on stuff so I thought I'd take the opportunity to ask you if…"

"NO BLUE WAIT!"

_Ker-__**SPLASHHHH**__-FOOSH..drip drip drip..drip...drip...drip_

Prowl's tanks churned in dread as he sprang out of his chair and rushed to the door, opening it to quite a – colorful scene. Bluestreak stood in front of him, optics wide, multicolored paint coating him from chevron to pedes, dripping off his doorwings and onto the equally paint-coated floor. Remnants of dozens of Cybertronian sized water balloons were scattered around his pedes, and one was hanging off his chevron. Both doorwingers stared at each other in shock.

"Ask you if... if you wanted your... data pad back," Bluestreak stuttered, offering the aforementioned pad to Prowl, it too dripping with paint.

Prowl very slowly turned to look down the hallway and saw Sideswipe standing there, in a position as if he had just tried to stop something really fragile from crashing to the ground, and expression that told he had failed and the thing had just shattered all over the floor. Sunstreaker was nowhere to be seen.

Next Prowl looked up to see the net that had held up the paint filled balloons, hanging open from the trip-wire Bluestreak had triggered.

"What in Sam Hill?"

Finally Prowl looked to the right and saw Ironhide standing down the hall, staring at the entire scene in bewilderment. "What happened to Bluestreak?"

All three turned to look again at Sideswipe, still holding the same position but now with an '_oh scrap_' expression on his face.

"Heh, wrong Datsun?" the frontliner ventured before turning and fleeing down the hall.

Ironhide sighed and trudged down after him. "Ah'll go get 'im, that turbi-revvin' pit-spawned fragger..."

Prowl looked back at Bluestreak, still, for once in his life, speechless. The tactician let out a vent. "Come on, let's get you to the wash racks," he said, guiding the younger doorwinger with a hand without touching the paint coated armor.

So it had come to this, Prowl thought, the young and innocent had been caught in the crossfire. This wasn't over, punishing those twins clearly wasn't working, and getting other mechs involved was clearly not the right path either. Those twins must be brought to justice, and Bluestreak must be avenged. It was time to get his own hands dirty.


	5. A Little R & R

Author's Notes: So this story is starting to take a mind of its own. I intended this to be a collection of short stories at first, but now it's something much more! Not that that's a bad thing... I'm just giving you all a warning. And you can thank Nova for a lot of the prank ideas coming up, I couldn't have thought up all of them on my own!

* * *

Sideswipe pranced through the Ark. It had been about two weeks since the paint balloon incident, and although Prowl had obviously been peeved about the situation, he had done practically nothing to punish the twins. True, Sideswipe and Sunstreaker had had to clean the mess up around Prowl's office door, but cleaning up after their own pranks was so routine now that it was basically part of the deal. Bluestreak had finally stopped looking up whenever he approached a doorway, Prowl hadn't sentenced them to hard labor, and so even though it was a whole fourteen days after the last prank, Sideswipe was still glowing with victory. He wanted to test the bounds of this new found freedom, and so he was currently in the throes of his second most favorite thing to do, and that was formulating his next practical joke (second only to pummeling Decepticons on the battle field, and one above teasing Sunstreaker about his paint job).

What to do, Sideswipe thought as he made his way to collect his work schedule for the day. Another direct attack on Prowl? Or should he beat around the bush a little bit first, circle in, like a sharkticon? Prowl was the tactician, but little did he know that Sideswipe also had a love for the game, however in his case his goal was not to defeat the 'cons on the field, but to find the most effective way to peeve of his superior officer.

But for now it was time to collect his schedule. Sideswipe entered the crew room, shoved his way past a couple minibots, and found his own name on the time sheet. He read his day's activities over, read them again, and then again. And then he frowned.

"Sunsteaker!" Sideswipe burst into the room he shared with his twin. "Prowl's given me the weirdest schedule today!"

"Oh," Sunstreaker dead panned, seemingly uninterested as he lay on his back inspecting some new paint bottles he had recently received.

"Yeah," Sideswipe continued. "First: 10 am to 1:30, patrolling the forest route that _Hound_ usually takes. Next: 2:15 to 6:00 pm, guard duty?"

"Guard duty?" Sunstreaker echoed in confusion.

"Yeah, what the frag is guard duty?! Have you ever heard of that?"

"Nope," said Sunstreaker, already disinterested in the conversation.

"Well, I'm calling Prowl," Sideswipe declared. He activated his comm. and didn't even bother hailing the tactician before bursting into his audios.

"_Prowl! What the frag is guard duty?!"_

"_You have really got to stop doing that."_ Prowl replied, in reference to the uninvited conversation start.

"_Yeah whatever, but you didn't answer my question, what the _frag_ is guard duty?"_

"_You stand in front of the main entrance, and you guard it,"_ Prowl said simply.

"_From what!"_

"_From intruders."_

"_What intruders? And besides, that's what Red's security system is for; doesn't he have like a bazillion cameras just for the main entrance?"_

"_He has five. One of them is going to be down for maintenance between 2:15 and 6:00 pm, so Red Alert would like somebody to keep watch during that time," _Prowl responded.

"_Tell Red to shove it! That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard," _Sideswipe ranted.

"_I will not tell Red Alert to shove it. I don't know why you are complaining, this is a relatively simple task to complete, even for you."_

"_Oh, that was a burn Prowl."_

"_I try."_

"_What are you going to do if I refuse?"_

"_The usual."_

"_Hmpf. Fine, I'll do it."_

"_Of course you will. Now go away, I have important stuff to do."_ And with that Prowl cut the link and the conversation was over.

Sideswipe huffed and flopped down on his own bunk. "Ugh, then I have to clean out the wash racks, at 6:15!"

"What's _my_ schedule," Sunstreaker asked, ignoring Sideswipe's last remark.

"I don't know, get off your aft and figure it out for yourself!"

o~o~o

The red frontliner stood in front of the Ark at 9:55 am, waiting for whoever it was he was going to be patrolling with. Much to his displeasure, it had rained last night and so the patrol route was going to be made of mud. But whatever, the dirt didn't bother him nearly as much as it did his egotistical brother.

"Let's get this over with."

Speak of the devil; Sideswipe was startled to find the golden warrior himself walking past.

"Hey, what're you doing?" Sideswipe asked as he hustled to catch up.

"Idiot, we have the same schedule."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"Huh, what the heck was Prowl thinking?"

Sunstreaker just grunted. And that was the start of awesomely not-fun day. The route was in fact made of mud, and Sunstreaker refused to go down any path where he might get even a little splashed, even though he was already dirty from the trip so far. As a result, Sideswipe had to go on his own more times than not while his brother stayed behind and buffed his armor.

In addition, Sideswipe was forced to listen to Sunstreaker's complaining, his groaning, his grumbling, and his moaning the entire time. Little known fact: Sideswipe actually couldn't stand his brother's constant complaining, not in the long run at least. People thought that he could put up with it because they shared the same room and spent a lot of time together. Oh, and because they were split-spark twins. But in reality, being exposed to Sunstreaker's negative personality for long periods of time really grated on Sideswipe's nerves, and right now all he wanted to do was punch him in his big, ugly (yes, he said it) face. And then shove it in the mud. And then sit on it.

Well, luckily for Sunstreaker's face, Sideswipe had somehow managed to restrain himself until it was 1:30 and time for them to head back in. They passed Hound as they were trudging back into the Ark.

"Oh, are you the guys who took my morning shift?" Hound asked when he saw them approaching. "I don't know how that happened, that's the shift I always have!"

"Yeah, we noticed," Sideswipe grunted as he walked behind his brother. Sunstreaker didn't even acknowledge the existence of the scout as he led the way inside. Hound watched them disappear into the Ark, shrugged, and then walked off.

"We have half an hour before _'guard duty'_" Sideswipe said, putting air quotes around the description of their next task. "Wanna hit the wash racks?"

"Where do you think I was going?" Sunstreaker snapped back.

_Of course,_ Sideswipe thought. _Where __did_ _I think Sunstreaker was going?_

The two eventually made it to the wash racks, to find them completely empty. Not that either of them minded. They each chose a station as far away from each other as possible and proceeded to wash the mud off of their armor.

Sideswipe finished first. "Hey Sunny," he said as he walked toward the dryers. Sunstreaker just grunted, so Sideswipe continued, "Does something seem weird about the soap?"

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know, like it's kind of sticky or something."

"Maybe we're using a different solvent now," Sunstreaker replied absentmindedly as he scrubbed vigorously at a fleck of dirt that didn't seem to want to come off.

"Hm," was all Sideswipe had to say. He found a suitable dryer and pressed the button to activate it. What came next, he was not expecting.

"Geeyaa! What the frag!"

Sunstreaker looked up at the sound of his brother's alarm. "What happened to you?"

"I don't know!" Sideswipe responded. He was now completely covered in some kind of white and glittery powder. He rubbed furiously at his armor, but with no success. "It's not coming off!"

"Well, how did _that_ happen?" Sunstreaker asked as he approached his now white and glittery twin.

"I just turned on the dryer, and then this! Gah fraggit!" Sideswipe exclaimed as he now tried to scrape the stuff off, only managing to remove a thin layer off the top.

Sunstreaker poked Sideswipe's armor, and then shook his hand vigorously when the powder stuck to his finger.

"Wait," Sideswipe said and grabbed Sunstreaker's arm to get him to stop shaking it.

Sunstreaker jerked his arm away, "Don't touch me!" he exclaimed. But it was too late, a white handprint had been left on his armor. He glared at his brother.

"Dude, I think we've been pranked," Sideswipe informed the other.

"No, _you've _been pranked," said Sunstreaker as he turned to walk away. 'I'm getting out of here, and I'm not touching anything for the next week. So good luck with... all of _that_ on your 'guard duty,'"

Sideswipe glared at his golden twin. And suddenly, he decided that he didn't have to put up with this. So before Sunstreaker could get very far, Sideswipe smashed his fist into the button for the dryer next to him and in seconds the other mech was engulfed in a cloud of white glitter.

"Aaargh! _Sideswiiipe!"_

"Slag!" Sideswipe yelped and raced out of the wash room, his enraged and glittery twin hot on his tailpipe.

Sideswipe led his brother on a merry chase through the Ark. They ran through the main passageway, past the rec room, through the officer's conference room, up two flight decks, and finally into a room along the hallway. Sideswipe slammed the door shut before Sunstreaker could follow him, backing away as the furious mech pounded on the other side.

"Can I help you?"

Sideswipe whirled around, to find himself face to face with Prowl. He had just barged into the tactician's office.

Prowl looked Sideswipe up and down before he spoke up again. "And what happened to you?"

"Uh, Prowl! I think we've been pranked!" Sideswipe said.

"Do you?"

"Yeah! Look at me, do you think I would have done this to myself?"

"I don't know and I don't care what you do with your spare time, Sideswipe, but I do know that you and your brother have guard duty in five minutes. So it looks like you're going to have to calm your brother down and get out there pretty fast," said Prowl as he listened to Sunstreaker rage at the other side of his door.

Sideswipe gaped at Prowl. "Seriously? We are not standing outside for four hours like this!"

"Oh I think you are. Or else do you want me to get Ratchet involved?"

"Pft, seriously? What are you going to make Ratchet do? Beat us up?"

Prowl looked up at Sideswipe with a 'don't question my ways' kind of look. "Would you rather stand in front of the Ark like that voluntarily, or have Ratchet march you out there and make sure you stay out there?"

o~o~o

Five minutes later found Sideswipe and Sunstreaker standing guard in front of the Ark's main entrance. It was a sunny day after the rain last night, and so their glitter-coated armor glinted nicely in the bright light.

Sunstreaker had his arms crossed and a surly expression on his face. "Your pathetic," he informed his shimmering duplicate.

"You're here too, glitch face," Sideswipe snapped back.

The two stood in silence. For the next half hour, they stood in silence. Several 'bots passed by during the time; they all gave the twins odd looks but simply kept walking. Until Tracks found them. He walked out of the Ark, saw the two standing on either side of him, and gave them a funny look but kept walking. He walked for a bit, without looking away, until finally he stopped and came back, facing Sideswipe.

"I have to ask, _what_ are you two doing?" Tracks asked.

Sunstreaker completely ignore the mech, but Sideswipe glared at him. "guard duty," he said.

"Guard duty?" Tracks said, confused. "What are you doing that for?"

"One of Red's camera's is being worked on, so we have to keep watch" Sideswipe gritted out, now glaring ahead.

"Really? That's the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard!" Tracks laughed. "And I have to ask, what is all over your armor?"

By now Sideswipe's face was screwed up in anger, and he really wanted to sock Tracks in the mouth right now. But he somehow restrained himself and answered the question, "I don't know, it came out of the dryers in the wash racks."

"Oh, didn't you get the memo?" Tracks asked. "Prowl sent out a message that the wash racks were out of order today."

Sideswipe stood in silence for a second, fuming. "Obviously we didn't," he finally said in a hardly restrained voice.

"Haha! It looks like you two got a taste of your own medicine!" And Tracks laughed again. He turned and walked away, still laughing hard.

Sideswipe was furious. This was the most humiliated he had ever been, and it didn't get better. As the next few hours passed, quite a few mechs saw them on their 'guard duty.' The two received a mixture of reactions: Ironhide gave them a bewildered look before turning away, shaking his head and muttering "kids these days;" Jazz took one look at the two and burst out laughing; Wheeljack saw the material they were covered with and said "Oh, so that's what that was used for!" before chuckling and leaving; and finally Tracks got a second laugh at them as he was returning to the Ark.

Finally, as their horrendous shift was coming to a close, Hound passed them by as he was coming back from a long patrol. He gave them that same odd look that everybody had been giving them throughout the day. "What happ..."

"IT WAS THE WASH RACKS! And no we didn't get the memo!" Sideswipe burst at the scout, finally losing patience with the situation.

Hound jumped at the shout. "Oh, okay," he said and walked into the Ark.

Several more minutes of silence passed. But suddenly a realization dawned on Sideswipe and he smashed his fist against the hull of the Ark behind him. "That _fragger!_" he growled. "Sunny, it was _Prowl!_ Think about it, he scheduled all of this, and our next job is to _clean the wash racks!_"

"Yeah, and you just realized that?" Sunstreaker replied from where he hadn't budged an inch for the last four hours.

"He's getting his revenge for the last pranks we pulled on him," Sideswipe continued, ignoring Sunstreaker's smart remark. "Well don't worry, our retaliation will be swift!"

o~o~o

Prowl was quite pleased with himself. Several days ago he had pulled off what he felt was a successful retaliation against Sideswipe and Sunstreaker. Although he knew this wouldn't stop the twins' pranking behavior, he hoped he had gotten the message across that he was willing to capable of stooping to their level to punish them. And he considered his 'prank' quite the success. He'd even gotten those twins to clean up after his own mess.

So yes, Prowl was pleased. He strolled through the Ark, with what was as close to a smile on his face as he could possibly get. That smile was going to be short lived.

He finally reached his office and punched in his personal access code. When the door swooshed open for him, he was stunned, and his doorwings drooped in shock. Every inch of surface in his office was covered... with data pads. From the ceiling to the floor to the walls to the desk, there wasn't a bit that wasn't data pad. There were hundreds of them, and not even his chair or even the legs of his chair had been spared the treatment.

Prowl was stupefied. The one question on his mind was how. He already knew who, and then by default why, but _how_? He had just been in his office last evening, how in the Pit did those two manage this in one night. He was still standing in the doorway trying to process the event, when he finally noticed something out of place. It was still a data pad, but this one wasn't stuck to a surface, it was innocently sitting on top of other pads on his desk, almost inviting him to come hither.

Now came the hard part. Prowl couldn't leave this obvious message unread, but first he had to get to it, which meant walking all over the data pads, which meant the possibility of breaking them, which meant the possibility of losing precious data. Prowl looked down at the path he was to take to his desk, and quirked an optic ridge in mild amusement. A trail of footsteps had been painted onto the ground leading to the beckoning message, in white glittery paint. How quaint.

And so Prowl carefully stepped into his office, cringing as the screens cracked under his pedes. When he reached the waiting pad, he picked it up and turned it on. The message that appeared was bold and clear: "Do you really want to play this game?"

Oh yes he did want to play this game. Prowl had never before wanted so badly to get back at the twins. The opportunity was here, if he backed out now he'd be letting them win. And he would never do that. But, looking around the room, Prowl recognized the fact that he was up against some stiff competition, and that he was entering a field he was not the expert in. He was the tactician, and he knew when he needed backup.

o~o~o

Prowl's office door swooshed open and Jazz bounced in. "Ya rang?" he asked as he pulled back the waiting chair and plopped himself into it.

"Yes, I did," said Prowl as he rearranged some data pads. Prowl had spent a long time clearing his office of the objects, and with each data pad he unstuck from the surface of the room his drive to get back at the twins grew more intense. During the time he had given much thought to who would be best to help him on his mission, and who would be willing. To him the answer was clear.

"Well, what'd ya want?" Jazz prompted. "Not in trouble am I," he asked with a grin.

"No," Prowl responded. "But I do need to ask a favor of you."

"K, shoot," said Jazz.

Prowl explained the situation, and when he was finished Jazz just stared at him. "Lemme get this straight," he finally said, sitting forward. "You," and here he pointed at Prowl, "want me," and he pointed at himself, "to help you," point at the tactician, "to prank Sideswipe and Sunstreaker?"

"Yes."

"Seriously?"

"Yes."

"An' I'm not gonna get in trouble or nothin' from it?"

"Seeing as how I would be helping, it would be illogical to punish you without punishing myself as well. So no."

Jazz stared at Prowl again, considering the proposal. For a good couple of seconds he just sat there and stared, until a wolfish grin spread across his face.

"I'm in!"

* * *

Author's Notes: Begin the war! And by the way, did anyone figure out what the title is supposed to mean? Instead of "rest and recreation," it's "revenge and retaliation." So if you didn't figure that out, well now you know.


End file.
